Vaccine - Autism Link, Afterall?
By MedHeadlines • Mar 7th, 2008 • Category: Autism, CDC, Children's Health, FDA, Family, Infectious Disease, Prevention, VaccinationsOfficials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have agreed that vaccines administered to a 9-year old girl contributed to her condition. Hannah Poling of Athens, GA, and her family may be receiving compensation from the federal vaccine fund, although the exact amount of the award is not yet known. The girl began presenting with signs of autism three months after receiving series of routine shots administered to her at the age of 19 months. 
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the document provided by the government does not suggest a clear-cut link between vaccines and autism, but rather admits that childhood immunizations further aggravated the girl’s underlying mitochondrial disorder, which evolved in a condition “with features of autism spectrum disorder.” Autism and other autism spectrum disorders are permanent neurological disorders characterized by altered social interaction and communication. It is estimated that 1 in 150 children may be affected by autism or related disorders.
The case of Hannah Poling will likely reignite the debate over possible link between vaccines and autism. While the exact cause of autism is not known to science, some argue that a mercury-based vaccine preservative, thimerosal (also known as thiomersal), may be responsible for the development of autism in some children. Since 2001, thimerosal has been removed from most vaccines in the U.S. and the European Union. Some of the vaccines which may still contain thimerosal, include inactivated influenza vaccine, tetanus toxoid, diphtheria and tetanus (DT) and tetanus and diphtheria (Td). Of these, only inactivated influenza vaccine is commonly recommended for use in children. Thiomersal is still being used in vaccines in countries around the world, most likely due to the fact that the World Health Organization has stated that there is no evidence of any link between thiomersal and the development of autism.
While some public figures and celebrities advocate the link between vaccines and autism, pediatricians worry that some children may not receive valuable shots, because of parental concerns over vaccine-autism link. The final decision about vaccinating their children belongs to the parents, it only seems responsible that they discuss their concerns with their physicians and weigh the risks and benefits of either action.
Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
- Do you believe that thiomerosal-free childhood vaccinations may contribute to the development of autism or related disorders? Why? Why Not?
- Is the risk of contracting a variety of infectious diseases, by not getting vaccinated, worth taking to (as some believe) avoid the risk of autism?
- Does the fact that the government awarded compensation to the girl’s family mean that there is a vaccine-autism link, afterall?
there’s no link until there’s a definite proof of it
That a legal decision and financial award was reached has no bearing on the science of whether certain vaccinations are related to autism spectrum disorders.
The courts are not scientific forums — far from it. Lawyers specialize in muddying the waters, not making them clearer, and thrive on murky situations where a buck is to be made.
Look at the breast implant fiasco — a huge legal verdict was reached, only to be controverted by scientific studies repeatedly.
No, lawyers (and many politicians) are the main impediments to scientific evaluation.
When they have completed a true double-blind randomized study comparing vaccinated and non-vaccinated populations and compare the rate of autism only then can we have definitive proof. To my knowledge this has not been conducted. I don’t believe it has anything to do with Mercury, rather a genetic subsceptability to a virus within the vaccine possibly. Vaccinations are a great scientific achievement and obviously have saved millions of lives and will continue to do so, but the coincidence and timing of autistic diagnosis and onset of behavior is more than just a simple coincidence.
Childhood vaccines are clearly contributing to the autism “epidemic.” To survive a bad case of diphtheria or measles, you need to lie quietly and cooperate with supportive care. I have two autistic kids myself; there’s no way I could have gotten them to lie still and breathe calmly if diphtheria were closing off their throats, or to stay quietly in a darkened room to minimize the metabolic activity in their brains until they were past the danger of measles encephalitis. Non-autistic kids would be much more likely to survive those previously-universal diseases. Childhood vaccines erased that selective pressure.
Mary is crazy
You can’t do a double-blind study of vaccination. To do so would require giving thousands of children injections of saline and signing of their vaccination cards; which would basically constitute perjury.
As a parent of an autistic child myself,with video proving that he was perfectly normal until he received his vaccinations. I think that unless you have and autistic child or have the opportunity to spend a full 24 hours with an autistic child, you have no idea what has happened to these kids or what they have to go through in just one 24 hour period along with their parents. Ask yourself what you would do if your normal child suddenly developed Autism because they received something that you thought was supposed to make them better. Would you be able to understand at a moments notice that not only their life but the rest of yours is no longer going to be what you are used to. So as far as the ones who think there is not a link, I ask that you take time out of your busy lives to go spend time with some Autistic children and then set back and ask yourself if you could handle it. To all of those who have accepted this fact and are doing everything under the sun to help their children and families I salute you.
Jennifer - We all feel for you and others in your situation, but I ask you and evreyone else to simply reread your post and to do so analytically. It should be obvious even to you that your entire post is an illogical muddling of emotion and unrelated concepts that you somehow construe as support for your conclusion. It does more than border on the irrational. In fact, it could be used as a negative example in a high school debate class. Pull yourself together, learn how science works, reexamine the evidence for the obvious conclusion, and then get on with your life. Don’t fall into the new age trap that science is BS either. The entire modern world is evidence of the validity of evidence.
Kyle — You are actually the one that needs to reassess the situation. Jennifer’s points are all valid. If you knew someone with a perfectly normal child who over a very short space of time turned autistic then you would have the same viewpoint she does. I’m friends with a family that has not just one, but three children that have been hit with autism. They begin life perfectly normal, and after the round of MMR and other vaccines turn into holy terrors. Unless you see it for yourself, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. If you do what she suggests — spend 24 hours in the home with an autistic family — you would walk away with an entirely different perspective. If you want to hear more on the subject then here’s a blog post I wrote a year and a half ago about a silly scientific study that had come out of Cornell trying to link television viewing to autism:
http://geekswithblogs.net/lorint/archive/2006/10/22/94779.aspx
Ends up that the strongest link in their research was really between precipitation and autism, which may in fact be a link between prevalence of the use of flu vaccine and autism.
In any event, get to know a family with autistic children before throwing out the viewpoint of people like Jennifer. If you do then you’ll find that all along they were right on the money.
The body of research which allegedly disproves the vaccine-autism link would be far more believable were not most of the medical research in this country funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
There’s all this talk of spending time with an Autistic child. Why not spend 24 hours with a child that is dying of a disease that easily could have been prevented by a vaccine?
Someday we will all have to just STOP. I know there are people out there not vaccinating their children but the leaders of the cause have not said to do this - they just want the government to come clean and to CLEAN up the massive amounts of garbage in the vaccines. I know my son got twice as many as I did. I think they do need to evaluate timetables etc… Which is where this needs to go.
Our assessment tools are very different today too.
And why should a parent not be emotional about their child? It doesn’t mean he or she is being illogical. You exam everything with EVERY diagnosis, whether its autism, CP, or whatever. My son too was normal before his shots. I do not believe they caused his autism, but I do believe they play a part.
When I say at some point we have STOP - it is because the bottom line is that are children are autistic so how are we going to help them. My son is so smart but can’t slow down enough to get to it or to get it out - thats what I want to help him with. These somewhat separtist views about autism are not going to help.
The government will always have its secrets -look how long it took for tobacco concerns to finally be made public - doctors used to tell people to smoke to calm their nerves - why because the companies hid the detrimental information - you can’t tell me the drug companies today don’t do the same thing.
If you would like to read more about autism (personal stories), my autistic sone has page on the site too, hopeezinetoday.com
Support Autism Awareness - Charity Auctions on Ebay now under autismmom614!
I work with autistic children all day long and I truly believe it had a lot to do with vaccines and the environment….I think mercury has a lot to do with it. 1 out of 5 parents I talk to say their child seemed to be normal until they got the cocktails of vaccines. Don’t be fooled…the pharmaceutical companies are out to make money. I know someone that works for MERCK. Who cares if a child gets the chicken pox. If you have a healthy child some vaccinations are not necessary and when your 14 lb infant is getting 4-5 vaccines at one time…that is wrong. Parents have to just say no to the doctors. Pay the co-pay and come back a month later. Too much at one time! What the doctors try to cure just gives us something else to deal with…more medicines for us to buy too…
Vaccinations are such a hot topic full of emotions from both sides. I do not vaccinate my children, however, I know that without them we would have some serious disease issues that we have overcome through the years. I am not against vaccinating, I am against all of the crap that they put into these shots. They can be made safely, but somehow the regulations permit such garbage to go into them that they aren’t. Anyone getting flu shots? They do have thimerosal in them-it is still being used. And yes, we all survived the chicken pox. Both my kids went through chicken pox and also recently had whooping cough. They have super strong immune systems and had no complications whatsoever. Of all the children at our 6 year olds birthday party during his contagious cycle of the chicken pox, the only child who was immunized was also the only child to come down with them. Vaccines aren’t 100% effective, adults are the ones passing the whooping cough around because it is milder and less frequently diagnosed-Those shots from their childhood are now null and void. We don’t need a million vaccines-It’s a money thing for the drug industry and as long as we accept it, they will push for more and more. I would love to get a tetanus booster for my kids- It’s practically impossible to do until they are ten years old- We don’t want the DTaP, just the P. It’s too inconvenient and in low demand for anyone to take on.
While there has not yet been a randomized controlled clinical trial, you have to admit that the study in Denmark was pretty convincing in that there is no link between autism and the vaccines. They studied the ENTIRE population of Denmark who were children in a ten year period, all 550,000 of them. There was no difference in the rate of autism of those vaccinated and those who were not vaccinated. If anything, the rate of ASD in the vaccinated group was lower.
I guess that Mary is saying that the six kids that died of measles in Ireland and the Netherlands in the last couple of years didn’t lie quietly enough?
Lorin, why is it the vaccines that caused their three kids to become autistic? Three kids in one house with autism, you’d have to wonder about something in that specific environment ( or more likely, in their genes) . I know that my parents passed on a high likelihood of an early heart attack to me (three uncles and a grandfather with a heart attack in their forties), why can’t we acknowledge the possibility that something about autism is inherent?
Well, I dont blame Jessica at all for not vacinating her children… I have had three children, all grown and now I have 5 grandchildren. I TREMBLE WITH FEAR EACH TIME THEY GET IMMUNIZATIONS!!!
In 1976, my eldest daughter had a severe allergic reaction to “something” in her first DPT SHOT…. she ran a fever of 106 and turned as blue as a smurf!! I had to rush her to the hospital…where they confirmed that it was “DPT SHOT RELATED”… Since that day, I still vacinated my children but I waited much longer than the doctors office “time charts” to give them to them….. but ONLY BECAUSE THAT WAS THE ONLY WAY THEY WERE ALLOWED IN SCHOOL… T(HEY WERE SCHOOL AGE AND STILL GETTING THEIR LAST SETS OF IMMUNIZATIONS.)…I think that infants are too fragile to get immunized so early…….wait til they are FOUR TO SIX yrs. old and getting into pre-school is my idea…especially for stay at home mom’s whose child doesn’t go to daycares.
I am one to really believe that when things happen to children, that 9 out of 10 times it is hereditery from a bad gene. I am not saying all the time, but more so than not…
My youngest granddaughter, now is 18 months old, and she is super intelligent, sits and “reads” books by herself as if she really can read. She understands the concept of it already. She is such a happy baby and full of life… she just had her DPT shots about two weeks ago, and she had no reaction to them at all. She wasn’t even sore on her legs…. but they did give her a series of shots on both legs…….and I DISAGREE WITH THAT…….TOO MUCH AT ONE TIME!!!!!!!!!!
(THANK GOD) I made my daughter wait longer before we gave them to her. I WOULD BE TOTALLY DEVASTATED IF SOMETHING HAPPENED TO HER BECAUSE OF A SHOT! AND NO AMOUNT OF MONEY IN THE WORLD WOULD BE ENOUGH TO COMPENSATE US FOR THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GOD BLESS THE CHILDREN,
AND SHAME ON THE DRUG COMPANIES FOR SELLING PRODUCTS THAT ARE HARMFUL TO CHILDREN ALL FOR THE ALL MIGHTY DOLLAR!!!!!!
Katrenavantassle
JESSICA,
WHAT STATE DO YOU LIVE IN THAT WILL ALLOW CHILDREN INTO THE SCHOOL SYSTEM WITHOUT SHOWING PROOF OF IMMUNIZATIONS??????????
I DONT KNOW OF ANY…….OR ARE YOUR CHILDREN STILL UNDER SCHOOL AGE?
KATRENAVANTASSLE
Rates of autism are increasing AFTER Thimerosal was removed from many vaccines. Also, some Euopean nations removed Thimerosal from vaccines ~15 years ago, yet they are seeing increases in autism. To me, this is evidence that Thimerosal in vaccines is NOT the cause of autism.